Italy is, clearly, ground zero for history buffs, romantics and foodies. But if, like me, you are all three, you are unknowingly in the thrall of a fourth passion: cittácollinare.

Cittá collinare translates to “hill town.” The phrase aptly references the elevated, small medieval towns that dot the Tuscan and Umbrian landscape. These locales – encircled by defensive walls, now protected eternally from growth – engage the mind, the heart and the stomach, to some degree, minus big city bustle and the usual mobs of tourists.

A crucial key to these hill towns is to get lost, blissfully adrift in the maze of alleyways that lead everywhere and nowhere. This is how you may stumble into a humble osteria, encountering the bowl of pasta, aswim in seasonal black truffles, you never forget. Or a motorcyclist suddenly zooming around a corner, pressing you through a small church doorway, creating an unplanned memory of scene and silence lasting a lifetime.

While visiting Rome, I note that Orvieto, the southernmost medieval hill town in bucolic Umbria, is only a 75-minute train ride away.

Cittá collinare is calling. I have to respond.

10:03 a.m.: Funiculare di Orvieto

Right outside its train station, Orvieto begins weaving its spell. Looming directly above a volcanic plateau, the old town placidly overlooks the valleys surrounding it. Shuttle buses and taxis are available, and mountain goats can scale the steep bluff, but mere mortals may enjoy better the little funicular railway cars that take two minutes to conquer the climb of 515 vertical feet to the top.

Total time: 7 minutes, waiting for the cars and including the 2 minutes or so up the hill.

10:10 a.m.: Strolling Corso Cavour

All roads may lead to Rome, but it’s Corso Cavour that runs through Orvieto. If you are crazy enough to forgo the sights and simply want to shop and Gelato your way through town, this would be the street for it. The pedestrianized main drag gently climbs and curves along, fronted much of the way by three- and four-story tan, gold and gray palazzos, many dating to the 15th and 16th centuries. Ground-level storefront stalls are mercifully short on tourist traps, but definitely long on irresistible cheeses, innumerable variations of salumi and bakeries balancing sweet and savory. The mojo here is “Italian-small-town-mellow”: shopkeepers glad you came in, but equally contento if you just amble by.

This medieval tower is one of the highest spots on the hill, and the most readily available to get a bird’s-eye view. A small elevator and then 170 wooden steps get you to an open-air bell tower. A 360-degree vista of speckled terra cotta rooftops consumes the near view, with the verdant green Umbrian valleys far below ringing the panorama. The town itself takes on visual shape, a longish oval circled by the outer walls defining a tight warren of streets punctuated here and there by small-sized piazzas. The only breaks in this pattern are the magisterial towers of the Duomo that, from this perspective, feel just minutes away.

Total time: 18 minutes for gazing, getting dozens of pictures and then jumping about 3 feet high when the clock bells unexpectedly clang, which happens every 15 minutes.

10:42 a.m.: The Duomo exterior

The Duomo, indeed, turns out to be minutes away. Even if churches and architecture aren’t your thing, gawking at the stone carvings on the Duomo’s front façade is a must. Biblical spectacle, 500 years before Cecil B. DeMille framed a single shot, visually plays out over four panels that convey more than 100 scenes, using more than 1,000 figurines, representing Creation, highlights of the Old and New Testaments and the Last Judgment. At least make a quick check of the lower right-hand panels, the Expulsion of Reprobates to Hell and The Damned. Few horror films are as graphic or punitive as what’s on display here.

Total time: 39 minutes.

11:21 a.m.: The Duomo interior; frescoes of the Capella de San Brizio

Entering the cavernous cathedral from the back, it feels hollow inside, but that changes dramatically on the right side near the altar, where the Cappella di San Brizio holds some of the more startling frescoes to adorn any Italian church. Luca Signorelli’s “Stories of the Antichrist” are hugely populated by murals whose main artistic style appears to be influenced by Classics Illustrated comic books of the 1940s-70s. Once again, eternity is divided between heaven and hell, and, again, except for the truly pious, eyes are inevitably drawn to what awaits those who have been naughty rather than nice. Pulsing through the drawings are bright yet deep reds, pinks, blues and greens that jump from these busy crowd scenes and convey a startling modern-eye view that seems at odds with artwork from around 1500.

Total time: 41 minutes.

12:02 p.m.: Lunch and an afternoon walk through Orvieto

The lure of a sit-down lunch supplants – however tempting – grazing on the go. One of the numerous outdoor restaurants ringing the Duomo piazza supplements modest sandwiches and salads with a pleasant Umbrian white wine.

The next destinations are four collections around town housing up to 2,000 paintings, sculptures and relics collected from the Duomo and other regional churches that no longer exist. These satisfying mini-museums, however, are largely an excuse for the main event: searching out cittá collinare charms.

The place doesn’t disappoint. An enchanting puzzle of narrow streets either dead-end or lead to quiet, minor piazzas that make up the quiet, residential quarter. (Orvieto’s walkways are, thankfully, made of smoothed-down cobblestones, not the jagged ones that seem designed to reach out over the centuries to trip and send unwary tourists flying.) About 20,000 people live here and, the route dictated by impulsive sightseeing instead of iPhone mapping, I am aware of magic being spun. At the heart of this tranquil feeling of quiet pleasure is the sense of real lives being lived against an extraordinary backdrop; funny how wonderful afternoon laundry on the line looks when strung from 16th-century walls.

Total time: 3 hours, 43 minutes.

3:45 p.m.: Pozzo della Cava

The way back on foot to catch an early evening train leads to one of Orvieto’s main lures: underground caves. Enterprising natives have, for centuries, dug into the soft tufa rock and burrowed out close to 2,000 caverns to store wine, hide from enemies and, often, live. This underground complex of nine privately owned caves reveals a rich storehouse of Etruscan, medieval and Renaissance findings. Replicas are optimistically for sale at a gift store near the exit (covert glances at the bottom of a couple pots reveal them made in Orvieto, not China, so points to the locals for ersatz authenticity).

But the lasting impression here – and, on reflection during the train trip back to Rome, of Orvieto itself – comes from following the stairs as they twist down and down into the rock. The descent conveys not just distance, but time being crossed.

And of a day away happily lost in cittá collinare, a destination I already yearn to revisit.